


How the Heart Breaks

by Morgana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, it wasn’t anything as simple as any of that. In the end, it was something far simpler and yet an infinite times more complex. When it all came down to it, what broke them up was them. Derek and Stiles, two jagged pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that should have fit, but ultimately didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Heart Breaks

It isn’t death or an injury or a supernatural threat that does them in. It isn’t the future that Derek wants to make sure Stiles has or the past that Stiles can’t stop worrying at. It isn’t the age difference or the fact that Derek’s a werewolf while Stiles is just... Stiles. It isn’t family or friends or any one of the hundred things that would’ve made sense.

No, it wasn’t anything as simple as any of that. In the end, it was something far simpler and yet an infinite times more complex. When it all came down to it, what broke them up was them. Derek and Stiles, two jagged pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that should have fit, but ultimately didn’t.

Their relationship dies a thousand little deaths over the course of months before it’s finally over. There are misinterpretations and assumptions that aren’t corrected, hurt feelings that are never admitted or soothed, and stinging words that are never taken back. Apologies don’t get made, either aloud or with sweet gestures, and by the time they think to mention any of it, it’s already far too late. The damage has been done, the relationship reduced to so much rubble, not with a swift, fatal blow but with a million little chisels, each one chipping a little further away at the love that they’d both believed was bedrock.

The night they sit down together and make it official, Stiles goes to the liquor store, buys two bottles of Jack Daniels’ finest, and proceeds to spend the weekend getting stupidly, blindly, sloppily drunk. He eats Derek’s precious Lindor truffles, every last one of them, wraps himself in his fluffiest comforter and watches one stupid Disney movie after another. And if he ends up reaching for his phone a few hundred times during Wall-E, it’s only because he’s a fucking sap who didn’t know any better than to fall in love with an asshole who was too damaged to love anyone else ever.

Except that’s not fair, is it? Derek did love him, at least Stiles thinks he did. Maybe he was wrong and he just read what he wanted, but if that was the case, then how can he even know if he loved Derek or just the man he wanted him to be? He scowls at the screen, hating the two little robots that get to have the simple love, the easy, sure love that he’d wanted for himself. The love he thought he’d found with Derek.

In the end, he turns off the movie and calls Scott, who comes over with another bottle of Jack, because he’s a true friend, and that’s what true friends do.

Derek, for his part, spends the better part of a week picking their entire relationship apart. He locks up the loft and drives out to the preserve, where he leaves his car in the driveway of his house before he heads deep into the woods. His nights are spent shifted, trying to outrun the pain that should be there but isn’t, not nearly as deep as he thinks it should go, and his days are spent covering his tracks so he can’t be found. Not that anyone’s looking for him, not when the pack is really Stiles’ instead of his. He’d just gotten to share it for a little while, but now that’s over.

It takes going home to a loft where Stiles’ scent has gone stale for the pain to sink in, settle in and become part of his soul. Stiles hadn’t missed him, hadn’t come by to check on him or sleep in his bed or steal his shirt, because they were over. He’d been gone for a week and Stiles hadn’t so much as noticed. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that Stiles hadn’t cared. And why should he? They were over, so Stiles wasn’t going to be caring about where Derek was or what he was doing anymore.

Derek has the vague sense that he should close himself up in the loft with his memories, but he ends up going to Crate & Barrel for new sheets instead.

Stiles spends exactly two weekends getting drunk and wallowing in his failed relationship before he decides that he can’t do it anymore. Never mind what it’s doing to his liver - it’s just plain _boring_ , sitting around his living room obsessing over the whole thing. It really doesn’t matter why, anyway, whether the final fault was his or Derek’s, since either way they’re still broken up. That’s what he tells himself, and at some point, he realizes that he isn’t lying.

Life starts to slip back into an old, half-remembered but still familiar routine. Stiles gets up and goes to work, comes home and hangs out with Scott and Kira and Lydia and Jackson, who’s decided to get his head out of his ass at last. He watches sports with his dad and lets Melissa feed him pot roast with baby potatoes and doesn’t take either of them up on their silent invitations to talk. And little by little, he actually starts healing.

Things start becoming associated with people and places other than Derek, jokes are made that Derek wouldn’t get, plans that he was never a part of carried out. And eventually, a hot barista slips him his phone number and Stiles doesn’t throw it away.

He’s done this before, built his life out of the ashes of pain, and it’s easier this time, easier than he would’ve expected it would be. Easier than it should be, and Derek should probably feel guilty about that, but he can’t quite manage to do it. He settles on being numb for a while, walking around town while he goes about taking care of his building and tending to investments, waiting for loss to knock him flat like a sledgehammer.

It doesn’t. He sees the sheriff at the grocery store and Melissa at Best Buy and they both give him sympathetic smiles and ask how he is, and he isn’t lying when he tells them he’s okay. He overhears Scott talking to Kira about going over to Stiles’ for pizza and video games at the diner and he smiles, glad to hear that Stiles is having a good time. They hadn’t worked out, even though they should’ve, but that doesn’t mean he wants Stiles to miss him forever, although it does sting when he turns the corner on a Friday night and sees Stiles sitting across the table from a tall guy with a warm smile.

Stiles is telling one of his stories, probably about a time he and Scott were caught doing something they shouldn’t, and his date is laughing. Derek watches them for a moment, mentally catalogues the sweater Stiles is wearing, the change in his hairstyle, the new watch he’s wearing, and then he turns away and heads home. He has a few weeks of The Good Wife to catch up on, and he thoroughly enjoys them, even if he won’t be able to listen to Stiles rant about Cary afterwards. He doesn’t pull out an old sweatshirt to sleep with, doesn’t avoid his large, empty bed, doesn’t do anything but check his email and go to bed.

Tomorrow he’ll get up and the world will go on spinning. And maybe someday a pretty brunette will catch his eye and he’ll remember just how good flirtation and new romance can feel. For now, though... for now, Derek’s heart is broken and he isn’t quite ready to put it back together. Not yet.


End file.
